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by dilangley



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: A romance that wasn't, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Introspective John, Making major life choices, The ride back to Blackwater, and never will be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 02:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16589192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: “John Marston could make a tonic from any plant on the frontier, shoot a crow through the eye at 100 yards, kill a pack of wolves armed only with a knife, and break even the wildest bucking stallion. He had shot with Landon Ricketts and taken down the capital of a country alongside its new leader. And those weren’t even the tall tales."John is not sure what it means to go home after the choices he has made and the life he has been living.





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**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2. This fic is canon compliant for both games.

Mexican earth had been beneath his feet so long that he no longer recognized its smell as foreign.

John Marston stoked his campfire and listened to the soft whuffing of his mare. She grazed on sparse grasses a few yards off, too smart and too loyal to need a tie-down at night. Her saddle lay on its side, her blanket next to it as a makeshift pillow. If he had been willing to ride a few hours in the wrong direction, he could have stayed in lodgings in Las Hermanas, but a soft bed could not coax him from his course.

If he could quiet his anxious body to sleep and rest his horse, he would be able to make the next leg of his journey in a day. The hours between now and morning loomed long and slow.

He should be going home. He had completed his mission. Javier Escuela and Bill Williamson -- two high-ranking names on the government’s shiny new Most Wanted list -- had been killed. His hand had pulled the trigger both times. His debt was paid.

Except that he had thought that before. His first few outings for the federal boys had been low-level outlaws, strangers to him, and he had thought himself selected because they needed someone who could kill and who was dumb enough to do it without asking questions. Even his wife Abigail had accepted it as if it were a new job, settling once she learned it was legal, benign even.

Only he had ever seen himself as something different than a run-of-the-mill outlaw. Only he had ever seen that he thought he was doing the right thing for so many years, no different than the jubilant, impassioned rebels here in Mexico.

But now it was all different. When he set out nearly three years ago to gun down criminals for the government, he had been an uneducated killer, a piss-poor farmer, a fumbling family man.

Now as he rode back home, the victor of a long war, he was no longer the same. He was no longer the same man he had tried to become. If a soul’s change could be visible, his wife and child would not stand a chance at recognizing him.

A few months ago, when he had stopped at welcoming campfires, he had unknowingly been told stories about himself. His name buzzed over his skin, a thrill of accomplishment and power. Sometimes the stories lauded him for good deeds and connected his name to heroics while other times they gasped over his death-defying escapades. John Marston could make a tonic from any plant on the frontier, shoot a crow through the eye at 100 yards, kill a pack of wolves armed only with a knife, and break even the wildest bucking stallion. He had shot with Landon Ricketts and taken down the capital of a country alongside its new leader. And those weren’t even the tall tales.

Now when he approached the campfires, the sitters’ eyes went to his face, widened at the sight of his scars, and they greeted him by name.

How could that man walk into the front door of his tiny scrabble ranch and put his hands to a plow beside people who only knew him as a dumb, illiterate bank robber? It didn’t matter if those people were his family. He wasn’t him anymore.

John eased himself down onto the ground and forced his thoughts to Beecher’s Hope. He tried to imagine it prosperous and strong and grounded, a place with roots and wings. He fell asleep as the rocky Tall Trees soil became the rich earth of Hennigan’s Stead and his petite, dark-haired wife lightened into a rangy blonde who carried none of his history in her eyes.

 

\--------------------

 

He had made up his mind about it. Never in his life had his wants and desires been the first item on his list of concerns. What he wanted had rarely been a factor at all. He trotted for Blackwater with all the urgency he could muster.

His voice was rusty from disuse a day and a half later when a woman beside a broken wagon flagged him down.

“Excuse me, sir, could you--?” Her eyes widened as he tugged the reins and pulled his horse up short. He watched the familiar tracking of her gaze. “Oh my goodness. You’re John Marston.”

“Howdy, ma’am.” He tipped his hat.

“My wagon wheel snapped clean in half on my way home, and then some good-for-nothing thief stole my horse out of the traces when I asked for help. I would walk but I’d never make it before nightfall,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I could sure use a ride.”

“C’mhere.” He reached out for her, and she approached cautiously before closing her hand around his arm. He pulled her, feather-light, onto the horse behind the saddle. “Where to?”

“MacFarlane’s Ranch,” she replied. And damn if that answer didn’t hit him right in the gut without any pain at all, like a sign dropped down from the hand of God, like some sort of fated permission not to go straight to Blackwater, not to rush straight back to whatever his normalcy might be. “My husband’s a hired hand there.”

“Not Amos, I’m guessing.” He remembered the congenial, mustached foreman whose eyes never strayed from Bonnie.

“No. Joseph.” She wrapped her arms tight around him as he eased his horse into a rocking-chair smooth canter. “I didn’t realize you knew the hands so well! I remember when you came to the ranch, of course.”

He could almost hear her embarrassed blush in her voice.

“Half-dead from gunshot wounds, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.” She giggled. “Miss MacFarlane complained that she saved a life and all she got for her trouble was another stupid man around the place. She’s funny like that.”

“Yes, she is.”

John urged his horse faster. The steady hoofbeats drowned out both thought and conversation, and he appreciated the moment for what it was: a strong horse below him, a feminine body pressed tight against him, and a good deed surging in his veins.

When the cacti turned to prairie grasses, his stomach rumbled for more than jerky and campfire vittles, and when they crossed under the blocky archway, his stomach pinched in tighter on itself with a queer, uncomfortable ache.

 

\---------------------

 

She cut a striking figure against the picturesque sunset: back ramrod straight, loose pants swinging around her legs, one arm gesturing decisive instructions. At her command, ranch hands moved amongst the cattle, checking bodies for scratches and blemishes. The animals milled around her, and she ignored them as she instead checked the ranch hands. Even from yards away, unseen, John could hear her brusque commentary.

“That arthritis still acting up, Joe?”

“No, ma’am. Doc set me up with some pain pills for when it rains.”

“Good. How’s Faith, Fred? Getting ready to foal right in the middle of the kitchen?”

“Y’know it’s not polite to talk about my wife like she’s one of the critters. But yeah, she’ll drop that baby any day now.”

As she turned away to find the next person in need of her questions, Bonnie saw John standing in the middle of the dusty road. Her face brightened.

“Well, Heaven help us. John Marston has found his way back to Hennigan’s Stead. To what do we owe this pleasure?”

He shrugged his shoulder. “It’s getting dark. Is there still a bed in the storage building?”

“Yes.” The corner of her mouth twitched upward as she walked toward him. “Though I’m thinking you’re not going to bed before the sun even goes down, so you might as well lend a hand.”

“I could do that.”

“I was just about to go ride the fences. We’ve had our first cougar in a long time. Killed two calves last week.”

“I’ll come along.”

“Saddle up then, Mr. Marston. I’m sure your horse is tired. Take your pick of the lot in the corral.”

They saddled up two horses and trotted out toward the fence line. He waited for her to start talking.

When he was a boy, he learned how to make rope, braiding the strands together in a repetitive motion. The easiest way was to work with someone else who knew what he was doing: one person pulling up, the other pushing through, in the smooth rhythm. Together, two people could make several yards of tight, strong line in no time flat.

Talking with Bonnie was like that.

 

\------------------

 

John stayed on the ranch for two days. He ran a bounty for a scumbag who had stolen six horses a while back -- dragged the screeching Bollard boy to jail with his hands tied to his ankles -- and with a gutted deer as bait, John found and shot the cougar. Bonnie had brought dinner out to his lodgings and chatted with him about finances, cattle, and her father’s trip to Armadillo to speak with the bank and meet with a friend.

The second day John baled hay from dusk until dawn. The ranch hands had a system down, but nothing could make the work more pleasant. In too-tight borrowed work gloves, knuckles prevented from unbending, John gathered, tied, and carried hundreds of bales. He never saw Bonnie, though he looked up every time he heard the clop of approaching hooves.

It was miserable, hot work, and by the time it was too dark to see, his arms and legs ached too much for him to want to even drag himself to bed.

“Gentlemen, you’ve done the work of twenty men today at less than half that number. Go wash up and see what Clara has cooked up as dinner for the masses this evening.”

He turned to the sound of her voice and startled. Bonnie had on a blue dress, only the hint of her boots’ toes peeping out from beneath its lacy bottom, and her hair had been twisted up artfully. She even had a broach on at her throat, a cameo accenting the slim swell of her neck. John spared a glance around him to see if anyone else found this unexpected. The wide eyes and amused grins around him confirmed it.

“Yes, ma’am.” Amos piped up first. “You don’t have to tell me twice to stop working and start drinking.”

“I believe I said eating, not drinking,” Bonnie said, smiling.

“Some of us prefer to drink our dinner, ma’am.” The youngest hand called out, earning himself claps on the back from the others. They all started to guffaw and move toward the cabins, talking among themselves. John peeled off the gloves and wiped a hand across his forehead.

“Mr. Marston?”

“Yes, Miss MacFarlane?”

“Would you come up to the house for a drop of whiskey?” Her face should have been beautiful above the picture-pretty attire, but her updo made her cheeks appear gaunt, her eyes big and wary. Her voice wavered.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

“I’ll go get cleaned up and pour two glasses,” she said.

He nodded and made his way to the water trough. The ranch hands had already dunked themselves in it, scrubbed clean enough, and headed to their own watering hole. John stripped naked and scrubbed with the scummy lye soap stuck to the bottom of the tub. It smelt like wild feverfew and acid, stung like hell in his scrapes and cuts, but when he pulled himself out of the water, his skin shined squeaky clean. He shook out his shirt, sniffed it, and then tugged it back on. It plastered itself against his wet skin.

He dropped his vest, chaps, and various guns by his bed in the storage building and made his way to the front porch of the big house.

 

\-----------------

 

Bonnie had cleaned up into a pair of her trademark pants and a big cotton shirt, her hair falling loose once more. Even back in these clothes, a glass of whiskey in hand, her expression was pinched.

He sat down opposite her in the wicker chair, took the proffered glass, and let the hot liquor sear down his gullet. They waited each other out through two refills. In his head, questions formed, spun out possibilities, and dissipated, none of them pressing enough to be worth making words.

Imagine his surprise when he spoke first anyway.

“I’m on my way back to Blackwater. I killed Bill Williamson. Javier Escuela too.”

Bonnie smiled at him mirthlessly. “You think there’s anyone this side of the Rocky Mountains don’t know that?”

He tried not to be pleased. “News travels fast.”

“When it’s about the famous John Marston, it does.” She poured herself a third finger of whiskey and licked a rolling drop from the side of the bottle. “So why are you really back at our little old ranch when Blackwater’s waiting?”

“I figure I fulfilled my obligations, and I’ll be heading home,” he said, “but I don’t know what that means. I’ve been living a completely different life for a few years now, not outlawing and not ranching neither. I don’t think my wife or son will know me. I don’t know if I’ll know them.”

John didn’t realize he wasn’t done talking until he saw Bonnie take another sip of her drink, her eyes patiently on him. He didn’t wait for sympathy or concern to grow there.

“That’s not why I’m here though. I found a hand’s wife on the side of the road and escorted her here.”

Bonnie ignored the unnecessary clarification. “Abigail and Jack will know you. You’re her husband and his father. There’s nothing more important.” The change in her voice distracted him from the sweet pain of hearing someone else use his family’s names.

“That’s a big statement from a woman who’s given her life to a piece of land and a slew of beef cattle.”

She nodded, chuckled a little under her breath, and then looked back up at him. “I’m getting married.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Married. His name’s Harold. He’s a businessman in Armadillo. He’s a widower with two teenage daughters.”

He stared at her until his eyeballs hurt with wanting to blink, and he realized he had to say something. The questions he wanted to ask about the reason and the ranch seemed inappropriate in the face of her bright eyes intent on his.

“Congratulations.”

They stared at one another, and she drained the last of her whiskey. She dropped the empty glass on the table with a clatter.

“I’ve never left this ranch, you know. Not really. You were right. I’ve given my life to it.”

“That’s a real good thing,” John said.

“The bank was getting ready to foreclose on us, and I found a man to marry us.” The weight of the world hung on that little word: us. It carried him across the years and the grassy plains to little camps where a charismatic leader used that word to create loyalty.

“I understand. You’re doing the right thing.”

“You too.” Her smile pinched the corners of her mouth.

They shared a long look, two people at a crossroads. Bonnie MacFarlane could lose her ranch or marry a man she did not love. John Marston could let go of this life of legend he had been living or let go of the domestic dream he dared with his family.

They would sell their skins to save their souls.

 

\---------------

 

John had saddled his mare and made his way to the gate while the sunrise still burned purple and blue, stars still twinkling in its velvety tapestry. He expected to be out of Hennigan’s Stead before the yellows and oranges danced into view.

“John!” Bonnie’s voice drew his attention, no louder than conversation but enough to cut through the morning’s silence. He could not have named it. The feeling came upon him all at once, an inexplicable anticipation, as she approached him. His fingers tightened on the reins of his horse.

“Once you get settled on that ranch of yours, come see me about some cattle.”

“I will.”

She stepped into the space between them as she marched among cattle and horses and extended both arms like twin rods, brisk and friendly. He accepted the hug, and in it, found an unexpected sweetness. The brusque impartiality of the gesture melted away to an instant, a split-second taste, of intimacy. For this moment, he could be John Marston, a legend of the west, come home triumphantly to a woman who looked at him as a hero and an incredible ranch.

When he rode away only minutes later, he morphed once more into John Marston, a tired outlaw, come home with the blood of friends on his hands to a woman whose bruised heart carried a lifetime’s disappointments and tragedies.

But the hope burned in his chest, dim and flickering, that this time would be different, for so was he.

**Author's Note:**

> After playing RDR2, I felt immediately compelled to dredge out this old, partial draft and finish it up. John's character wasn't done for me. It still isn't. 
> 
> I took the liberties of assuming John's hunt for Bill and Javier took years (2-3) as opposed to weeks. I think that's a little more realistic, considering all that happened.
> 
> Also I LOVE Abigail. That isn't what this fic is about.
> 
> If you're thinking of writing RDR fanfiction, please do. We need more!


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